CHAPTER 20
Twilight

The Crosslands Retirement Center is a lovely place for people of any age to spend time: one hundred eighty-eight acres with clustered cottages and two-story buildings built along a U-shaped ridge. It has all the amenities, including different levels of health care. The Quaker-related institution is as good as any retirement facility and better than many. It is, however, also an institution, and Robert Greenleaf, the life-long institution watcher, had his own judgments about how well this institution was functioning.

Greenleaf wrote an essay—published in On Becoming a Servant Leader—in which he outlined his thoughts on retirement communities in general and Crosslands in particular, even though his comments about Crosslands could probably apply to over ninety percent of all such elderly care institutions.

First, he thought segregated retirement communities were a bad idea and would be abandoned some day, and he had held that position before he and Esther moved to Crosslands. On the other hand, Crosslands provided health care when needed, and Esther had diabetes. He had no quarrel with the amenities. “All the services are good, and we feel well cared for. The spirit of the staff is excellent, and our community is financially sound to date and looks good for the future, in sharp contrast to some others that have gone bankrupt.”¹ What was missing was more fundamental: a theology for a life-care community.

After eight years living at Crosslands, Greenleaf outlined some of the concrete issues that could frame such a venture.

• Administrators and staff should share in the life of the community but usually do not, even though they are caring and have a good spirit. Greenleaf admits that, “We [the residents] are old and crotchety and often critical… So with all of this, we seem much of the time to live in an uneasy truce with them.”² His suggestion was to have an administrator who lived on site and participated more fully in community life.
• Stop delegating administrative authority to the residents’ association. Doing so politicizes the community, and the power often is not well-used, violates the contract under which residents entered the institution, and foments distrust. An able administrator in his or her prime is a better choice to make decisions about resources than “foggy old residents.”³

Bob and Esther made more than one protest when the residents’ association (which was not truly empowered by residents, he claimed) asked for changes, and the administration went along because “that’s what the residents wanted.”

One day Bob vented his feelings about the human community in which he lived. “What we call community here is synthetic, contrived, far from the real thing. The challenge is to get as close to the real thing as possible, but there will always be a gap.”⁴ Then again, Bob and Esther were never ones to spend much time chatting about the weather, playing croquet, or using time unproductively. They were not there to retire from anything. It was simply the place they lived while they completed their life 312adventures together, so they were as unusual in this community as they were in any other.

As with other institutions, Greenleaf believed that many of the problems ultimately went back to trustees who, caring as they were, could be harried. “Concern for the quality of life in the community is not a big priority, he wrote. “I am not aware that the philosophy that underlies this operation has been fully articulated.”⁵

Bob Lynn saw Bob’s contradictions in his position on Crosslands, where he was not personally active in many events or activities of governance. “He was not as intent upon identifying himself on some past tradition as he was creating a place for himself and other seekers within this world. Consequently, he always was willing to be aloof from institutions. I think this was one of the huge ironies of Bob’s life that he took institutions so seriously but was consistently removed from the life of any one institution to which he was committed and with which he had to live.”⁶

In 1984, Bob suffered a stroke that signaled the beginning of a long period of declining health. Less than two weeks later, the Center for Applied Studies changed its name to The Robert K. Greenleaf Center. Greenleaf did not campaign for the name change but agreed to go along with whatever the Board decided. “He wasn’t terribly excited about that,” recalled Bob Lynn. “He was so modest and unassuming that he was reluctant to have it changed but it was the only truthful thing to do. There just wasn’t any other reality to the Center by that time.”⁷

With declining health, Bob became concerned about the future of the Center. In 1985, he laid it out for the Board. “My major concern for the Center is for its future. I may be hanging up my sword any day now, and I would like to feel the work I have done to encourage building greater integrity into our many institutions will be continued and enlarged in new directions.”⁸

Ironically, his concern coincided with an uptick in demand for his essays. In 1986, his old company AT&T assigned two bright young people to the full-time duty of developing workshops and publications “as they related to the quality of work life.” Fred Myers and Diane Bullard (now Diane Cory) knew that quality of work life was a hot issue of the day and used that umbrella to work in support of the Center. Fred, Diane, and John Braid—their superior at AT&T—arranged for essays to be printed and donated back to the Center and for videotaped interviews with Greenleaf 313to be recorded. They found office furniture and computer gear for the cause.⁹

Fred Myers became almost like a son to Bob. Fred teased him, engaged in deep discussions, kept him up-to-date on Board decisions, and saw to various needs. Diane Bullard had the privilege of joining Fred in extensive conversations with Bob. Diane remembered Esther as much as she did Bob.

Many who knew the Greenleafs would agree with Diane’s estimate of Esther’s influence. “Esther was a good listener,” remembered James McSwiney years later. “She was good at sometimes telling Bob what he heard.”¹¹

In March 1988, the Center sponsored a symposium on servant leadership in Atlanta. Bob attended a session by speakerphone and took questions from the audience. The gathering brought together people who had known and worked with him in multiple settings, many of them meeting for the first time. One of the hidden agendas for the Board was to determine any possible future for The Greenleaf Center.¹² Response was positive enough that the Board was encouraged.

At the Atlanta Symposium word filtered through the room about “The Forbidden Video.” Fred Myers had produced a modest twenty-minute videotape about the life and work of Robert Greenleaf to show at the Symposium. When Bob saw it, he threw a fit and forbade its showing. There was nothing wrong with it technically; it was beautifully done, but Bob said, “None of this is about Bob Greenleaf! It’s about servant leadership.” This, of course, made everyone in Atlanta more curious. Today, you can buy the tape from The Greenleaf Center in Indianapolis, along with several other videos of Bob talking about various topics. He was not 314comfortable on camera, and it showed. When Ann McGee-Cooper videotaped him, he warned her, “I think best when I have a pencil in my hand, so what comes out extemporaneously may not be what I would write down someday.”¹³

Jim Tatum was installed as Board Chair after the Atlanta conference. Years before Jim, like Bill Bottum, wanted to meet this man whose works had affected him so powerfully. He called the Greenleaf household and said, “We’ve never met, but I just wanted to call and tell you how deeply I resonate with your writings.” Bob responded, “Oh, gee whiz!”¹⁴ The relationship went from there, and Bob eventually hand-picked Jim to chair the Greenleaf Center Board. Several long-time Greenleaf associates called Jim “half John Wayne, half Mark Twain,” but he was anything but a country hick from the “Show Me State.” An Army veteran who was wounded in Korea, Jim went home to his poor area of southwestern Missouri and started Crowder College. First, he had to lead an effort to persuade the Missouri legislature to pass enabling legislation that would allow junior colleges. Jim is a legend in the educational world, a great believer in the servant nature of junior colleges, a skilled practitioner of consensus and a student of organizations. He also understands the paradoxes of Robert Greenleaf.

Jim Tatum and a new board did get it done, eventually moving the Center’s operations to Indianapolis, and hiring Executive Director Larry Spears, who helped make the Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership a worldwide force.

Beginning around 1985, at the urging of Bob Lynn, Greenleaf made numerous notes for an autobiography, but his energy—and health—ran out before he could pull it together and before Joseph Distefano, Bob’s old 315friend and personal choice for a biographer, could complete the task. In his most complete introduction to a possible autobiography, Bob called the story of his life “The Autobiography of an Idea,”¹⁶ although he told Joe DiStefano that all his ideas were autobiographical.¹⁷ With a working title that focused on the idea of servant leadership rather than the person of Robert Greenleaf, he was betting that interest in his ideas would su-percede curiousity about his life.

Bob was consoled in his final years by visits from friends, although his energy level did not permit long visits. Teacher and author Parker Palmer was one Quaker friend who spent time with Bob. He got acquainted with Bob and Esther when he was dean at Pendle Hill, a Quaker school in Wallingford, Pennsylvania. Perhaps only fellow Quakers could appreciate the quality of Parker’s monthly visits. Parker greeted Bob and sat, and they exchanged a few pleasantries. Then there were long silences. Every now and then one of them would speak. Maybe he would be answered, maybe not. After an hour or so Parker would get up and say, 316“I certainly enjoyed this visit, Bob.” Bob would respond, “So did I, Parker. Come back when you can.” And then Parker would drive back to Pendle Hill.¹⁹

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Esther’s diabetes began affecting her sight and ability to get around. Finally, reluctantly, she moved into Crossland’s nursing home facility in 1986. Soon thereafter, Bob moved into a smaller studio apartment that was closer to the nursing home. “One of the few times I saw him show pain was soon after Esther had moved into the nursing home facility,” remembered Madeline. “He’d go over and pick her up every day and bring her back, and she slept there. It was the only time I ever saw him cry. It broke his heart to not be able to take care of her, but he couldn’t pick her up anymore if she fell.”²⁰

Somehow, Bob managed to write his two last essays during this period, using a new computer word processor supplied by Fred Myers. Old Age; The Ultimate Test of Spirit (1987) was “an essay on preparation.” He reveals that his most productive years were between the ages of sixty to seventy-five, all because of a long period of learning and preparation for those years.²¹ “Spirit,” he wrote, “can be said to be the driving force behind the motive to serve. And the ultimate test for spirit in one’s old age is, I believe, can one look back at one’s active life and achieve serenity from the knowledge that one has, according to one’s lights, served? And can one regard one’s present state, no matter how limited by age and health, as one of continuing to serve?”²²

Bob’s final essay was My Life With Father (1988). It is a profile of George Greenleaf, a statement of gratitude to the man who first exemplified servanthood for his unusual son.

By 1988, complications from diabetes had blinded and crippled Esther and were affecting her memory—but not her will. Esther, “the stable one,” refused to eat. She was determined to die on her own terms. Then Bob had a major stroke that left him unable to speak, and Esther decided that Bob still needed her. Maybe she could not get around or see, but she could certainly speak. So, she came back to life as Bob’s mouthpiece. Within nine months, Bob had recovered enough speech that he could manage without her and she let go again. During this time, she was incontinent, and Bob cleaned her.

They had talked about the idea of ending their own lives when they were no longer worth living. One day Bob asked Esther, “Do you want us to just both go out now, together?” And she said, “Oh, not now Bobby. I can still paint in my mind.” She was blind but was painting in her head in the mornings. With that consolation she was fine, but not for long.²³

Finally, with full consciousness, she again refused to eat in February of 1989. Madeline saw her mother four or five days before the end, when she was still alert. She sat with Esther and held her hand. A woman came in with food and said, “Open your mouth,” and then popped in a spoonful of mush. One mouthful was all Esther would take, and she refused to swallow that. The woman offered another spoonful. Esther frowned and clenched her teeth. The woman said, “Apparently, we aren’t hungry,” and Esther replied, “Apparently we’re not.” Those were the last words Madeline heard from her mother.

Newcomb stayed with her the last three days of her life. Knowing her wishes, he refused to allow an IV or any other life-sustaining measures. Esther was said to be in a coma, but every time they tried to feed her, she clenched her teeth again. She would not even take water. Her almost superhuman willpower lasted to the end, which came on February 22, 1989. The New York Times carried her obituary the next day.²⁴

Bob, of course, was devastated. Without Esther, he had no soulmate to simply sit with him every day, no one to call him Bobby, no buffer against the forced congeniality of the residents of Crosslands. All his life he had sought his time alone, but preferred to spend it alone with Esther. He was miserable at Crosslands by himself, and the children discussed having him move in with them, but then he had another serious stroke and could not walk, so he stayed put.

This stroke, and subsequent ones, signaled the end, and everyone knew it. Newcomb visited Bob when he could. In August, 1990 Madeline traveled to the Persian Gulf with her husband Greg Jaynes, who was covering the buildup of the Gulf War for Life magazine. She returned about a week before Bob died and spoke to him on the phone. He could not talk back, but he listened.

Lisa visited her father every Tuesday for months. She got up at 4:00 a.m., left her young children, and spent five hours (each way) on the train to sit with him for three hours. She remembers it as a profoundly healing time.

Lisa sat with Bob. She held his hand, cleaned his feet, and massaged his head. When it was time to go, she walked out the door, looked back at her father through the window and blew a kiss. He always smiled and blew a kiss back to her.²⁵

Bob died at 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, September 29, 1990. All the major obituaries were accurate, but none, of course, could capture his essence. The Philadelphia Inquirer said he was “a management consultant who preached that the human spirit is more important than the bottom line.” The New York Times said, “Mr. Greenleaf wrote extensively on the topic of servant-leadership, a theme that deals with the reality of power in everyday life—its legitimacy, the ethical restraints upon it, and the beneficial results that can be attained through the appropriate use of power.” Bob Lynn told the Terre Haute Tribune Star, “He was a rare person in his generation, or in any generation, and Terre Haute should be proud of him.”²⁶

On the following Tuesday, Jan Arnett, an administrator in Student Affairs at Indiana State University in Terre Haute, had a sudden urge to attend Robert Greenleaf’s memorial service. She had read his work but never met him. “I simply knew I had to be there,” she said. “I didn’t know why.”²⁷ She drove to Callahan’s Funeral Home at 25^th and Wabash, just a few miles from where Bob was born, and slipped into the room for the 10:00 a.m. service. Not many people were there, and those who were had come from some distance. In the Quaker tradition, those present were invited to say a few words if the spirit moved. Alan Rankin, the former President of ISU, who had been introduced to Bob by Jim Morris of the Lilly Endowment, made a few brief, gracious, heartfelt remarks, and others stood and said their remembrances. It was a simple, dignified ceremony, just right for the man.

Before the service, the three children decided to place the urn with Esther’s ashes in the coffin with her Bobby. It remains there today, close to his heart.

Then, on that chilly, raspy, rainy day, the small group of family and friends traveled to the Highland Lawn Cemetery and sloshed through the wet ground, their black umbrellas adding color to the landscape. They gathered around the gravesite—Ed Ouelette, who was in the Carleton classroom with Bob when Professor Helming made his famous remark; Bob Lynn, who challenged Bob’s thinking about religion; Sister Joel Read; Mac Warford; Jim Tatum; Larry Spears; Susan Wisely and others from the Lilly Endowment—they all had their stories of time with Bob. “It felt right, peaceful,” said Jan Arnett. “It was where we were all supposed to be.” A granddaughter sang an alleluia by Mozart, the coffin was lowered, and then there was a moment of awkwardness. Newcomb, in a spontaneous gesture, suggested they all bow as a way of saying goodbye. Every person in the tent put his or her hands together and made a deep Buddhist bow toward the open grave. Thus ended the service, but not Robert K. Greenleaf’s influence.²⁸ That would continue.

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320

EPILOGUE

Exactly ninety-eight summers after Robert Greenleaf first saw light, I drove to Terre Haute on another cloudy, humid July day to see what remained of his time there. His birth house at the corner of 11^th Street and Lafayette was gone. The home at 1021 South 21^st, where Bob watched Hal-ley’s comet, was replaced years ago by a sturdier structure, one with electric lights and indoor plumbing. I never found the three adjacent houses where George, Burchie, and June lived their final days, forever together, forever separated. The wonderful people at the Vigo County Historical Society, fellow travelers on the high roads of history’s adventures, had never heard of Robert K. Greenleaf.

I knew one place where I could find evidence—Highland Lawn Cemetery, east on the Old National Road. Entering the gothic gate, I drove to Section 15, walked through fragrant new-mown grass to Lot 223, and found Burchie, George, and June, lying in that order. June was still diminished, her headstone half the size of her parents’. Not more than 100 yards south, in Section 17, Lot 588, Grave 3, I stumbled upon Robert Kiefner Greenleaf’s marker. It was half-covered with grass clippings, barely raised above the ground. I had walked by it four times before noticing it. I knelt to read the inscription:

Robert Kiefner Greenleaf

1904–1990

Teacher, Philosopher

Servant-Leader

“Potentially a good plumber; ruined by a
sophisticated education.”

RKG

I straightened up and looked around to get my bearings. Bob’s final resting place was lovely, peaceful, but also within sight and sound of Route 40, a road historically important to America’s doers and seekers, connecting far Eastern and Western horizons. A fitting backdrop for this life.

A hill occupies the center of Robert Greenleaf’s section in the restful 1884 cemetery, but Bob’s gravesite is not on the summit. He reposes in a spot down-slope, where he can be present but not draw attention to himself.

He always wanted it that way.